


if you need, come build your home in me

by thefigureinthecorner



Category: The AM Archives (Podcast), The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Chinese Alex Chen, Cooking, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Japanese Mark Bryant, M/M, Oliver only shows up briefly at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: Wherein Mark and Alex bond over food.
Relationships: Mark Bryant/Alex Chen/Oliver Ritz
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	if you need, come build your home in me

**Author's Note:**

> title is from “small hands” by radical face
> 
> I am not East Asian in any way so if I royally fucked something up please feel free to tell me; it’s a combination of me doing research and also projecting my personal experiences with learning to cook Arabic food.

“Ooh, whatchu making? Smells good.” Alex leans against the doorframe to the kitchen, watching as Mark chops up the last bits of a head of broccoli. Mark looks up briefly before turning back to the task at hand, sliding the broccoli into a pan already full of sizzling oil, garlic, and spices, and moving on to carrots. Some salmon sizzles in another pan off to the side.

“Salmon and vegetables. There’s some rice in the rice cooker already. One of the few Japanese things I really remember my parents making.”

“Man, I wish my parents had taught me some Chinese recipes. I miss their cooking,” Alex groans. He comes up behind Mark to wrap his arms around him and kiss his neck as Mark finishes up with chopping the carrots into thin ribbons and picks up the scallions he has sitting on the counter.

Mark shrugs. “My parents actually never really taught me how to cook. I mean, they didn’t teach me much of anything, they practically left Joanie to raise me, but they used to be all—“ his voice takes on a mocking tone— “‘cooking is the women’s job’ and all that bullshit, so I pretty much taught myself to cook in college.”

Alex snorts. “Oh, is that why your taste in food is so goddamn weird?” He slides away from Mark and sits down at the kitchen table, grinning.

“Oh shut up, you,” Mark laughs. “But, yeah, okay, that is part of it, I guess.”

Alex hums. He’s silent for a moment before he speaks up again.

“Mine didn’t really teach me to cook either. My parents, I mean. They… well, they found out I was gay when I was fifteen and they kicked me out, so I guess I just never really learned, like, adult skills or whatever from them. That was also when my pyrokinesis started, so, y’know. Bit of a wild time.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. So, I’m in a similar boat I guess. I tried to look up the recipes for the things my parents used to make but I honestly can’t remember the names of half of them, especially given I only know a lot of them in Chinese, and some of them use ingredients that are either super expensive because they’re imported, or they’re just difficult to find in the US. My parents used to bring back a stockpile of ingredients every time they’d go back to visit China. I honestly have no clue how they managed to get everything through security,” he smirks. “Maybe they were atypicals too. But honestly, even if I did have everything I needed to make the foods, it’s not the same. There’s no online recipe in the world that can beat a family recipe.”

Mark nods. “Yeah, I feel that. Especially not being able to remember names for things— I mean, I don’t think my parents ever really gave me names for some of those foods. They kinda just made them. I don’t know if the foods had formal names or if they were just family things, y’know? And every time I tell people that they find it weird but it’s always been weird to me that people expect every single Japanese food to have some formal name. But,” he gestures to the pan with his spatula, “sometimes the food is just grilled salmon. Grilled salmon has a million different recipes in English, it’s not just one monolithic thing.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “God, I know, right? And like even if the food does have a name, I mean, no two people make pasta with tomato sauce the same way, why the hell would other cultures have one set recipe? Especially with all the regional variants of things.”

“Yuuup. Plus, I mean, my parents were born and raised here. Our grandparents on both sides had some weird “no Japanese at home” rules when my parents were growing up— I guess they wanted my parents to be caught up with their classmates when they went to school or something— so my parents really didn’t pick up much Japanese and I picked up even less. Everything I do know is from trying to learn on my own. So even if the foods did have names at one point they might have gotten lost somewhere along the way.” He shrugs again. “But, hey, what are you gonna do about it?”

The kitchen goes comfortably quiet again aside from the sound of the salmon and vegetables sizzling in their respective pans. The rice cooker beeps as the smell of the miso and sake in the salmon glaze wafts around the kitchen, and Mark hums, satisfied with how dark the fish has gotten as he turns the gas off and starts to move everything to plates.

“Dinner’s done. Text Oliver, tell him to hurry up.”

Alex doesn’t have a chance to— the front door of the apartment opens and the two of them are immediately met with an “Oh damn, smells great in here!” as Oliver shucks his jacket and shoes at the front entrance. The shoes had been a learned habit— Alex and Mark both had a firm no shoes-in-the-house stance, and Oliver had eventually picked the habit up after being frequently glared at by two annoyed boyfriends.

He slides into the third seat at the kitchen table, kissing both of them on the cheeks as he enters. The three of them slip into their normal evening dinner routine— Oliver ranting about his day at work and how “that Bryan guy” screwed up some simple formula again, Alex and Mark getting sidetracked on some discussion about niche music genres and Mark excitedly trying to explain whatever the hell the underground accordion community is, and all three of them basking in the warm atmosphere in their new home.


End file.
